THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
YOUNG TARO AT RAPA
In southern Polynesia the starchy root of this water-growing plant replaces the equatorial
breadfruit as the basis of poipoi.
As regards the famed personal attrac
tiveness of the Polynesian women, due al
lowance must, of course, be made for an
almost entirely subjective factor in the
early records-the enthusiastic state of
mind of European or American seafarers
who had been cooped up with companions
of only their own sex during voyages
many months in length.
The island women would naturally
seem paragons of beauty, moreover, to
voyagers who had touched en route at the
Strait of Magellan or at primitive African
or Australian havens.
The relative leisure in which most of
the women spent their lives, their dis
tinctly "feminine" natures as judged by
European standards, and their locally
broad and independent views concerning
the distribution of their favors, all had
effect in creating an impression which has
grown into a fetish.
Native ideas of sexual morality were,
as a matter of fact, by no means uniform;
a reader of Cook, or of any of the other
early navigators, will find abundant evi
dence that originally the freedom ob
served at certain groups of islands was
balanced by rigid ideas of chastity at
others.
From Tahiti, and still more from the
Marquesas, the tradition of beauty cou
pled with almost total lack of restriction
seems to have pervaded the world. The
propaganda, if it may be so called, dates
back to Quiros and has been carried on
by Cook, Marchand, Krusenstern, Porter,
and a host of later travelers, as well as,
indirectly, by missionaries and others who
could regard no part of the condition
without abhorrence.
And yet not one of the early writers
gained an inkling of the real significance
of native customs which departed from
the ethics or the social code of Europe!
The whalemen who visited the Mar
quesas mainly to take part in debauchery,
returned home filled with pious condem
nation. More godly sojourners attributed
the whole state of affairs entirely to the
zeal of the devil.
Krusenstern explains the depravity of
young Marquesan women as due to the
cupidity of the men of their families, who
sought by vicarious means to obtain iron
or other useful material from the white
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